A Flaming Finale
by BandGeek58407
Summary: Set during 5x24. House has had many odd cases, but never has he had to do a differential for smoke pouring out of his own ears. Crack!fic with spoilers.


**Credit for this prompt goes to my baritone buddy, Ken, and our crazy lunch conversations. He wanted the royalties, but those don't exist in fanfiction. Sorry Ken! **

**Disclaimer: (checks self) Nope. Still not David Shore. **

_**A Flaming Finale**_

"House, _go away_."

"Sorry," House quipped in a very non-conciliatory fashion as he tried to catch up to Cuddy.  
(Key word being "tried.") "Not until we _really _talk about last night."

"There's nothing left to talk about!" she said loudly, wheeling on him with intensity in her glare. "So stop sending stool samples and pirate strippers to my office." While House returned her glare with a mocking imitation, hers slowly faded into confusion. "There's…smoke…pouring from your ears." She took a moment to try and collect her thoughts. (Key word, again, being "try.") House merely stared up at the ceiling and the billowing gray fog.

"Hm." Absently his hand flapped through the smoke as if to test its actually being there.

"Are you really that pissed at me?" she asked jokingly.

"Not really," he said, surprisingly lucid. "Maybe my brain's on fire."

"That doesn't make any sense," Cuddy dismissed.

"More sense than my 'being pissed at you.'" He turned back down the hallway, toward one of the floor's nurse stations, and called loudly, "Someone come mediate—my brain can't think straight due to emotional upset or cranial arson!"

Suddenly Wilson popped around the corner. "Did I hear someone call for a voice of reason?"

"What's the differential for this?" House asked him with a point to the cloud above his head.

"Hm…" Wilson sighed, Cuddy staring in growing disbelief. "Smoke out of the ears…that has to be a brain fire. Have you got any other neurological symptoms?"

Cuddy blinked a few times and found, much to her dismay, that she was still awake. "Are you serious?"

"Well," House sighed. "Not much besides the hallucinations, but you already knew that. And my Vicodin keeps turning into lipstick when I'm not looking. It's kind of frustrating, especially when my leg hurts. Lipstick just doesn't give the same high when ingested."

Nodding, Wilson gripped the back of his neck and then placed his hands on his hips. "There. Now I can think better." He took that opportunity to think, though in a few seconds a certain dean of medicine would doubt that he did. "We've got to get you scheduled for an MRI."

Silently Cuddy stared at each of them in turn, then throwing her hands into the air. "There is a fine line between enabling him and being an idiot, Wilson, and you're currently on the moon."

They stared back, but only briefly.

"So!" Wilson said, clapping once. "I'll page Foreman, you get down to the MRI, and—"

With a ding, the elevator at the opposite end of the hall slid open and Taub took two steps from the car, clutching the blue patient file and gesturing wildly. "_There_ you are! Listen, we figured out the—"

And then the sprinkler system kicked in.

Thankfully there was one right above where Taub was situated; he was heavily doused, made a strange squealing sound that House would have mocked had it not been for the brain fire, and scurried back into the elevator before the door had time to close again. No one said a word. They hadn't wanted to talk to him anyway.

They were too busy staring up through the deluge at House's still-spewing brain smoke.

"Mmm," Wilson murmured disapprovingly. "A brain fire incurable with large amounts of water indicates a debilitating mental illness." As the news sunk in, he looked to the ground and sighed. "If only Amber hadn't played with matches."

At that point, Cuddy had lost nearly all ability to form coherent sentences. Luckily she recognized this and opted for silence. Had she been able to speak, however, she probably would have come close to firing them. But no one would ever know.

"C'mon," House said, motioning to the elevator. "Let's do a road trip. Drive me down to that psychiatric hospital you keep talking about. We can have a moment and torture millions of people we don't even know for a whole two and a half months."

Wilson shrugged, smiling. "Good times."


End file.
